Cyberpunk ressurection
by Pentagulia
Summary: My first attempt at a full length story. R&R appriciated. Those who read will be read in turn. Thank you.
1. Hungry Animals

Chapter 1: Hungry Animals

It was the moment. Nodal, it transcended the dull, uninspired reality of Single's everyday life.

A chronological space miles away from the dull gray concrete walls and ceilings that boxed in his life and held captive his soul. From here, from now, he could see the future stretching out ahead of him like a thousand-armed spider, a crystalline matrix of possibilities branching out  
from this one instant, this iota of his existence. It was the moment before the kill.

He could feel the drug coming, rushing through his bloodstream like a bullet train, slamming his brain with the frantic, orgasmic intensity of the primal animal within. His expression was calm, unreadable as he paced silently along the threadbare carpet of the hallway, the matte black  
suitcase clenched between whitening knuckles. He ignored the chipped elevator doors at the end of the hallway, the cheerful hologram who asked what floor he would like as he shouldered past the heavy door to the stairs. The familiar smells of ferroconcrete and urine assaulted his nose as the steel pushbar ruffled his heavy coat in passing.

Up. Climbing. Roof. A small sign, red Japanese kanji, below it two words, smaller, in English. NO ACCESS. His movements were automatic as he jammed the vibropick into the lock,  
touched the power stud. The door opened away from him into the noise and drizzle of a Nerima night. He stepped out into the misty precipitation condensed from the tumourous overlapping domes that defined the skyline, made his way to the edge of the roof.

Single gazed out across the glare of the Nerima streets. He was crouched on one knee, his eyes watching blurred lines of light shuffle back and forth as a Sapporo beer holo rotated slowly in the sky. His hands opened the case without him thinking about it, found the lens caps and removed  
them. Snapped the scope on the chamber. They moved like hungry animals, autonomous of his  
control, practised and methodical. The drug was hitting him hard now, the bitter grey paste still burning unpleasantly on his gums. He felt nothing as he screwed the barrel on to the chamber, snapped the stock into place. His eyes were elsewhere, watching as the drizzle fell, seeming to steal the colour from the objects it landed upon. Below, in the gutters and runnels of the storm drains, you could see the stolen colours staring back, vibrant glow of laser and neon dancing on top of the rainbow of oil-slick sheen.

He loaded a bullet into the chamber and pressed the stock against his shoulder, the moulded rubber seal of the eyepiece jutting into his cheek. The computer in the scope read his optic nerve, zoomed with the iris of his eyes, smooth pan to a 15X magnification of a cheap Korean  
convertible, its silver sides gleaming in the rain. He watched through the scope's imaging system as the door to the nightclub opened and two men came out, the unnatural bulk of blocky pistols and Kombinat muscle-grafts disrupting the smooth lines of their two piece suits. Behind them staggered a boy, 18, his pace made awkward by drink. His clothes looked too expensive, too flashy, jacket glimmering with reflective patches and embedded holos. The girl on his arm was laughing, she looked expensive, well-trained.

Only the best for the son of the CEO of Matsume Softworks.

His arms tensed. Now was the zenith of the moment. The drug burned in his mind, fighting the rush of adrenaline seeping through his body. His breath was measured, his movements imperceptible as the enhanced myomer filaments in his wrists made tiny adjustments to his aim. He waited. Despite his training, despite his wishes, despite the drug, the moment swelled and loomed in his mind. The sulphur and polychloride stink of the rain filled his throat. The way the guards body armour reflected the sodium haze of the light, A flash of laughter from the girls lips, the rough, unyielding metal in his hands. Burned into his mind. Just like every other kill.

A muted, unimpressive crack mingled with the other noises of the night as Taichi Matsume, heir to his father's Zaibatsu reeled backwards. The burn-scored 7.65 mm hole in the centre of his forehead was the only blemish on his face as the ground rushed up to meet the remnants of  
his skull.


	2. Runinng blind

Chapter 2: Running Blind

The first time Wilson hit her, Eva dropped onto all fours, crumpled in a ball of pain. Hot blood rolling onto unfinished ferroconcrete, her face burning where it had scraped and torn against the floor, her gut twisted into a solid knot of agony. It hurt almost as much as the rejection, the knowing he'd done it. There had been soft words, after, and darkness. Holding each other on the couch by smog-muffled starlight, huddling against his shoulder after brownout. He had said how much he was sorry. Told her it would never happen again. He swore off the hex and said he was gonna maybe take a vacation. Take some time to unzip himself. Maybe access a self-help vid.

The second time Wilson hit her, Eva was tensed and ready. She knew she had pissed him off good, and while she hadn't seen the blow coming, it hadn't surprised her. Tensing her neck and shoulders, closing her eyes as she told him had been involuntary, and she had hated herself for that. It was the first time Eva had ever burned without him there to run the biz end, his voice heavy and calm, smooth like real buttermilk, the kind that didn't come from beans and was kept locked behind the armored glass cabinets in the Ginza supermarkets. First time she had ever run without Wilson managing the corpo clients and paying the right people to look the wrong way. It had been a good run, too, she had always planned to share the money with him. She thought that that was probably what had pushed him over the edge, that she had acted without him and done it well. That was the kind of face Wilson had, big, important, slick, but needy too. Puppy dog eyes and a sad, almost disappointed sneer as he balled his fist. It was the kind of face that always calmed big situations down real quick and just took over smooth as graphite. He didn't like not being in control, and he hated being shown up.

He had apologized that time too, but briefly, and they both knew that he only regretted taking a swing at her, not being angry in the first place. Before this, she had debated, momentarily, using her split of the take to buy an engagement ring, laughing then at the thought of a diamond solitaire glittering prettily on his smooth, powerful hands.

The third time that Wilson hit her, she was out the door and running before he could apologize, thin, slick plastic of a disposable raincoat on her shoulders and the faster of the two Hosakas banging against her side, wrapped in a loose tangle of trode cables and antistatic briofoam. She took the first train out of Koganei, then reported all the cards from their joint account stolen. The little Hosaka portable hadn't taken her far, just deep enough into the pulsing neon macroform of cyberspace to make a few calls and drop a few names before she left it upended in one of the trash bins outside of the train station, rainwater slaking down the factory-perfect oblong of its unmarked keyboard.

Eva thought about those times now, watching through the layers of glass and polymer as the restless night breeze tumbled twirling ribbons of sodden fax through sodium-glare of the Nerima streets. Remembering the chemical odour and muted baselines inside an NewU boutique. Diffuse halogens on anodized aluminum and the whine of high speed servos. Catalogues of flawless new faces, Calvin Klein and Hilfiger on thick glossy paper, their fixed smiles reflected dimly on the surgical steel of robotic manipulators. She remembered the waiver forms, and her temporary, stolen SIN, the fleeting image on the sonagram fading as the monitor clicked off.

She had been dazed afterward, alone. Huddling in the coffin motel in her rented foot-and-a-half of vertical existence, the world had suddenly seemed like a very complicated place. Without Wilson to run the Biz, no one would talk to her about doing a run. The thin white and pink circles of the regenerative derms on her shoulders smiled back with blank media images, Hello Kitty with a bandaid, brand on top of brand, signifiers layered almost to the exclusion of meaning. Despite the sickly white goo inside the derms, her new breasts still hurt, her new face was a delicate mask, taut and fragile like the surface of still-warm sugar icing. Her credit chip was nearly maxed. She wondered if running had been the right thing to do.

For the first time since she had met Wilson, locked away in a plastic tube 18 metres above the crowded, uncaring streets of Nerima, Eva had cried then, mournfully, painfully and until she fell asleep, rolled in the thin nylon blanket eye-bolted at the corner to the bedfoam.

That had been a long time ago, in a way. Seven months, perhaps now, or eight? She wondered for the millionth time how things might have been different. If she hadn't met Wilson. If she hadn't run. If she hadn't later met Sam. If she hadn't learned to Biz. If she hadn't kept burning. If she had been caught. If things had been different. Possibilities. Eva dealt a lot in possibilities these days, alone in a neon lit downbiz bar at 1:18 am, course black denim dress, tazer in her handbag, and her "don't-fuck-with-me" boots. Slight and young, and trying not to look nervous, her gentleman caller already a full three minutes late. Generally speaking, Eva didn't wait for her clients. Burning AI's wasn't the sort of work where people sometimes got held up at the office or had trouble in traffic. Anyone desperate enough to call upon her services usually had enough trouble following them to make waiting around if they didn't show unworth her while. This time it was corpo though. Business-to-business. Industrial work. Kind with fringe benefits worth listening for.

Eva had been surprised when Sam had told her about the client. Sam had seemed surprised too, but it was always hard to tell with Sam. Usually when the corpos came knocking it was bad news in one way or another. They had either caught up with your work on them or they wanted you to do something to get you in even worse with one of their rivals. Stranger still had been the offered pay. The zeros weren't anything too astounding, certainly not the sort of money to even register as a blip in the corporate accounting figures, but that there had been no threat of blackmail, no backdoor catch, no implied _or else_ was something entirely unheard of. So she had said yes. Sam had told her to leave the country. Nothing good ever happened when the big players started asking for help. She had been too intrigued to decline. And that brought her here. Pulsing ultraviolet of the cleaning drones whisking the cigarette butts from under the patched bar stools as jangling strains of _Nyarlathotep's Cradle_ pulsed off the scuffed surface of the dance floor. The acoustics were shit without people in here to buffer the sound, she noted. She stared into the rhythmic strobe of the lonely, darting holos, visualizing the beat of the music into saw-toothed lines of green and blue.

She didn't recognize the approaching footsteps until they stopped behind her. She whirled around into a blur of a dark synthetic suit and gleaming black wingtips. Her eyes rose slowly to meet the smooth, cream-and-coffee mask of his face. Taking in the long smooth fingers. The heavy gold ring. The tazer forgotten and lost in her clenched fist. Atrophied.

"Hi, girl. You done runnin' now?" Wilson asked.


End file.
